I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

For any who want more, complete list of all posts by month since 2011
  • how could I skip when I was two and seventy

    how could I skip when I was two and seventy


    Three years ago I published these reflections (with pictures) a week before my 72nd. birthday. I don’t know why, but I thought they deserved a second read. We’ll see what you think?

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    I had a very sweet Happy Birthday message today on my Columbia High Class of 1964 (Texas) message board from one of my boyfriends who I noticed sent me birthday greetings for the past 3 years on this website which I never check. Thanks so much to Tim for remembering me. I immediately went to Facebook and added him as a friend so that I can send him birthday greetings on whatever day his might be. I confess I have been remiss in wishing others a Happy Birthday unless I am prompted to do so by the Big Brother of Facebook who is forever watching over me.

    I am struck by how soon my 72nd. birthday will be…April 21, one week from today. Sweet Lady Gaga, as The Red Man famously said, how did this happen. My first birthday card came from my personal Medicine Man Dr. Martin and his entire staff. These are the people who see me most frequently, and I appreciated the Life is Meant to Live and be Celebrated sentiments. I figure if they’re hopeful for my future, I should be, too.

    I’ve received not one, but two, birthday cards from former President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center, both of which were quite lovely and one signed by the President himself. Why two, you might ask, as I did. And then, of course, my bank ATM machines have been unusually prompt on good wishes whenever I’ve made withdrawals in April which I assume has something to do with their corporate guilt for the outrageous service charges they favor me with every month.

    The message board for the 1964 Columbia High School graduating class in West Columbia, Texas took me back 54 years to that senior year when I was about to graduate from high school and leave my little town of Brazoria, Texas that was 15 miles from the Gulf Coast for summer school at the University of Texas in Austin 90 miles away. Big changes were on the way for me, but take a look at the images of my senior year when I was voted by my fully segregated all white 90+ students class as the Best All Round favorite, or as my dad invariably teased me by saying, she was the best all the way around.

    Return with me to those thrilling days of yesteryear when my mother was always so happy for me to be dating a boy.

    Note particularly the hands and feet

    (Poor photographer – he must have spent hours on that pose)

    (our mascot was the Roughneck)

    I am the one on the far left with fist pumped

    (one of the original fist pumpers)

    Senior prom

    (different boyfriend, Kerry, who gave a huge corsage)

    my mother rolled my hair until I left for college

    Note black and white striped shirt – 

    I was calling a junior high basketball game. 

    Yes, that’s right.  A teenager in public with my hair rolled.

    Mom made it a condition of my going to the gym.

     

    Senior Follies – and they were

    I sang an unremarkable rendition of the St. Louis Blues,

    but the bright yellow fringe dress was memorable.

    my lifelong love of tennis began here…

    on real tennis courts. Hard cement. 

    But I saw myself playing at Wimbledon.

    …and basketball, too

    as Coach Knipling used to say about my game,

    Sheila is short and slow, but she can shoot a free throw

    and of course, the political

    deals were struck between me

    and my good friend Leon

    who made an awesome VP

    The photos today are courtesy of me with my cell phone and my yearbook so quality leaves much to be desired, but you get the general idea of this 18-year-old baby dyke trying her best to be straight but  unknowingly about to add complexity to her sexual awareness through life in a women’s dormitory at the state’s largest university where the population of the dorm was greater than the population of the town where she grew up. Talk about trouble.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

  • Unrelated: Olympics and Bee Stings

    Unrelated: Olympics and Bee Stings


    Haiku #1

    The final athletes

    Stand on podium, tears flow

    As they hear anthem.

    The Haiku is a Japanese poetic form dating back to the 17th. century; as we near the end of the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo, and since I can’t speak Japanese, the least I can do is attempt their artistic expressions. The Haiku structure is for three lines: five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables again in the third line. There’s probably much more to think about, but I’ll leave it to that with my apologies to the true Haiku poets.

    Haiku #2

    The athletes go home

    to face practice, to wait for

    twenty twenty-four.

    Finally, the Haiku is supposed to be written for what is going on today. In addition to the close of the Olympics, Pretty and I had a frightening day with our granddaughter. We had a picnic with Pretty’s father at a park near her Little Mountain antique mall. Papa had brought a box of mountain tomatoes which we consider a delicacy. Although rain was not in the morning forecast, the grey clouds mixed with precipitation began on our drive up the road with intermittent downpours.

    Our granddaughter Ella wasn’t bothered by the rain. We ate lunch at a covered picnic table in the park. While the adults visited, Ella was busy, going thither and yon with the fervor of a twenty-two month old child determined to explore.

    Skies cleared just long enough for group swings, as in Ella was in a playground swing with no basket, Pretty pushed her in the swing while Papa and I circled the wagons around them to prevent any unexpected dismount.

    A good time was had by all for more than hour when Papa had to leave for his home in the upstate, but Ella was not ready to go home yet. She walked a short distance to the baseball field where she had walked around a few minutes before with Papa and Pretty.

    Unfortunately for our little girl, she wandered into a dugout that had a nest of angry flying insects. She started wailing as they stung her repeatedly which caused Pretty to spring into high gear and run as fast as she could to rescue Ella. I watched in horror as Pretty shouted It’s bees. And I just got stung twice, too.

    OMG, I thought and from the look on Papa’s face, I knew he felt the same. Y’all go on, he said. I’ll clear the table.

    We took off to look for a doctor but had no luck until seeing a CVS Minute Clinic after what seemed to me to be an eternity of driving. Rural medicine in full display. Pretty raced in to the CVS but returned with the news that the pharmacists were afraid to prescribe Benadryl for a child younger than four. Our heroine Pretty did purchase Children’s Tylenol which Ella’s mother made sure we administered when she talked to Pretty on the phone. Ella slept the next half hour as Pretty drove me home.

    Haiku #3

    Cries of pain linger

    from stings of mad hornets. Too

    young to understand.

    So here’s to the weekend – good luck to the Olympians who will be putting the final touches on the games for everyone to enjoy, to the winners who will celebrate on the journey home and to those others who won’t have medals to angst over as they make the flights to their families and friends. Oh no. Both winners and losers will angst over whether those planned flights will fly.

    And here’s to our brave granddaughter who scoffs at not only the regular bumps and bruises but also the stings of a heretofore unknown enemy.

    A special “here’s to” for Pretty who was wounded as she defended our Ella in the midst of a crisis. She moved swiftly to save the day.

    At this time Ella is at home with a peace offering of vanilla ice cream. I have now reached the altered state I need to take a nap.

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • When I Was One and Twenty (with apologies to A.E. Housman)

    When I Was One and Twenty (with apologies to A.E. Housman)


    Five years ago in the summer of 2017 I posted my apologetic version of British poet A.E. Housman’s classic poem “When I was One and Twenty” published in 1896 in a collection called A Shropshire Lad. Housman, who was born in 1859 and died in 1936, had partially funded the publication of A Shropshire Lad following a publisher’s rejection. In today’s jargon, we call that self-publishing. The book has been in continuous print since then so somewhere in London a poetry publisher in the last decade of the nineteenth century cursed himself on a Roman British tablet…or on something equally appropriate.

    Good news. I have updated my poem from five years ago, but before I wax poetic, I felt it might be helpful to share the original. The following was copied without permission from The Poetry Foundation.

    When I Was One-and-Twenty

    When I was one-and-twenty
           I heard a wise man say,
    “Give crowns and pounds and guineas
           But not your heart away;
    Give pearls away and rubies
           But keep your fancy free.”
    But I was one-and-twenty,
           No use to talk to me.
    When I was one-and-twenty
           I heard him say again,
    “The heart out of the bosom
           Was never given in vain;
    ’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
           And sold for endless rue.”
    And I am two-and-twenty,
           And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
    Interesting aside, Wikisneaks reports Housman met a young man named Moses Jackson when he was in St. John’s College at Oxford, developed a homosexual attraction for him which was not returned, and promptly failed his Finals in humiliation. I can personally identify with unrequited love in a college setting but thankfully focused on academics to graduate cum laude. But then, my poetry wasn’t brilliant.
    When I was One and Twenty

    (With apologies to A.E. Housman)

    When I was one and twenty,

    My world was make-believe.

    A play directed by others

    I felt compelled to please.

    But now I’m one and seventy,

    The play is on the shelf.

    No lines to learn, no marks to hit,

    The director is myself.

    (August, 2017)

    Here’s my revised efforts five years later

    When I Was One and Twenty (with apologies to A.E. Housman)

    When I was one and twenty,

    I waited for love to find me

    In the depths of a study hall.

    But love never came, the nights were long

    As youth slipped away in a pall.

    But now I’m six and seventy,

    The curtain takes a call.

    Love came in time, the nights are sublime

    Away, long away, from the time in the study hall.

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    Okay. Clearly I haven’t captured “brilliant” in the intervening years.

  • 1st alert weather x 3

    1st alert weather x 3


    Since last night’s final weather alert on the 6 o’clock evening news called for heavy rain today, I made sure to watch the early morning 1st alert weather on all three local channels before beginning my walk. Carl and I completed our sunrise check of the skimmer basket at the pool and much to our joy found the basket filled with a few leaves but no frogs. Huge relief.

    The consensus of the television weather forecasters seemed to be the overcast sky would hold off dumping rain until after 8 a.m. so I sneaked out the back kitchen door at 6:45 under the watchful eye of Carl without disturbing the still sleeping Spike and Charly and, most importantly, Pretty. I knew the ever early riser Carl would guard the door until I returned.

    Full disclosure this is the twentieth week of my return to early morning walks after a sabbatical of oh, well, let’s round that off to roughly 13 years. For the forty years of my working life in the numbers world, I rose early every morning and grabbed a dog to go walking with me for half an hour in whatever neighborhood I lived in at the time. The names of the dogs changed over their lifetimes, but I am nothing if not focused on routine which, combined with my love of the outdoors, made the walks a great time to clear my head before being chained to a computer at my desk inside a stuffy office. Five days a week unless weather prohibited.

    Following my lengthy walking hiatus, I have now increased the schedule to every day – but no dog due to an unfortunate accident involving Charly earlier this year that resulted in an ambulance ride to a nearby hospital ER. Not really her fault but my concentration isn’t what it used to be – why not limit the distractions.

    Speaking of distractions, this morning had a doozy. I started out walking down the incline on the street next to our house, walking downhill always got me started on the right foot (or left, wherever the open road beckoned). Each morning I assessed the progress of the construction of three new houses in the process of being constructed where the wild heavily forested undisturbed lots had been for the past four years and for the first ten weeks of my return to the early morning walks.

    Suddenly without checking with me first, three white wooden For Sale signs had been evenly spaced in the ground of the natural area. Who would be interested in buying these out of the way lots on a sleepy street in Lexington County, I thought when I had walked past them in the spring. Within two weeks, SOLD covered all three.

    For two months the sounds of huge pine trees falling, shaking the earth as they fell, the whirring of saws cutting them into smaller pieces, the sounds of bulldozers roaring through the undergrowth knocking down everything in sight, and the amazing sight of a massive rock being picked up by a large piece of equipment I now know is an excavator. I watched one Friday afternoon as the excavator picked up the rock, raised it in the air and then dropped it with such force my dogs freaked from the aftershock in our back yard. Pick up, raise, drop. Repeat.

    The three lots are now completely razed, brightly colored dirt smoothed on their surface, and this week marked the start of a new phase as the cement blocks used in the foundation were delivered at 8 a.m. Saturday which allowed the new crew of Five Guys to work on the foundations of the first two homes.

    Against this backdrop of my worry during my walks over all the natural life whose homes had been destroyed, I passed the third lot under construction this a.m. and made the curve that indicated the first tough climb for me. The sky was overcast as the first alert weathermen promised, no rain so far, but no sunlight either.

    I was making my usual excuses for walking slowly up the incline. For example, wasn’t it better to be walking at all really?

    Nearing the top of the hill where I usually took my first break, I stopped where I stood. Just ahead of me on the right was a wild boar standing calmly in a driveway with only its square dark back side visible. OMG, I thought. This wild boar has been displaced from the forest down the street where the new homes were under construction. And out of all these houses I walked on the road between since rounding the curve, this wild boar chose an unremarkable driveway for its escape route to somewhere.

    My mind raced to the inevitable conclusion that my life was in mortal danger when a woman walked up the driveway from the house and spoke to the wild boar. Come on, Daisy, move your bloomin’ arse. Get back in this house.

    Have I mentioned my macular degeneration and or vivid imagination? I thought not. The cute Daisy who I then saw resembled a happy dog of undetermined heritage never looked in my direction.

    The weather forecasters can predict rain – but they can’t warn you for crazy.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • Imagine. Dream. Believe. Always.

    Imagine. Dream. Believe. Always.


    Backpack, pink summer shoes, water bottle, today’s art work and daily report…our granddaughter Ella’s accessories for summer camp today. Imagine. Dream. Believe. Always. 

    (I wonder how many Olympians had a version of this mantra when they were children?) 

    IMG_20210729_145712550  “Tube, Tube.” You Tube videos

    serious business after nap this afternoon

    IMG_20210729_181045968

    July 29, 1898. My grandfather George Patton Morris was born in Huntsville, Walker County, Texas. This is a picture of his family except for the eldest son who had already left the farm when this picture was made. George is the little fellow standing to the right of his mother in the bottom row. He was the 9th. of 10 children – seven boys and three girls – born to James W. and Margaret Antonio Moore Morris in their home(s) in Texas. This family portrait looks very similar to many family images I’ve seen at the turn of the century in the early 1900s. 

    But of course, what makes these people special to me is that I am their descendant. George had three children in his twenties, the youngest was my father. When George was 47 years old, I was born to that son Glenn and his wife Selma.

    My grandfather’s family was neither prominent, wealthy, nor even well educated. From what I have found through oral family lore, they weren’t a fun loving group, either; yet they worked hard and somewhere along the way held fast to imagine, dream, believe, always. 

    I had the greatest good fortune to grow up in Richards, the town where my grandfather had a single chair barber shop – a town less than 30 miles from where he was born, a small town in rural southeast Texas. I learned many lessons from my grandfather in that barber shop – not the least of which was that he loved me without reservation and helped me to imagine, dream, believe in family, always.

    My grandfather I called Pa would have been 123 years old today. I wish he could have met Ella James – he would have loved her without reservation, and that’s a gift I will happily pass on to her every chance I get.

    Thankfully family isn’t limited to direct ancestry – occasionally we have second chances for broader understandings of the bonds we share with others. 

    Huss Brothers at Desk

    The Fabulous Huss Brothers as I knew them

    Pretty and I had a home on Worsham Street in Montgomery, Texas from 2010 – 2014. Montgomery is a town in Texas coincidentally only 18 miles from Richards. We had wonderful loving friends there during a difficult period, and I had grandparent “schooling” from three little boys I called the Fabulous Huss Brothers.  Although I haven’t seen them in more than four years, their mother Becky sends me pictures at random moments. This week she sent me several from a canoe trip vacation on the Boundary Waters, including this one that I think is priceless.

    output (78)

    l. to r. George (8), Oscar (12), Dwight (10)

    From our twenty-two month old granddaughter Ella to my grandfather who would have been more than a century old today to the Huss family on Worsham Street in Texas – nothing means more to me than the people of my past and present who are  always…family.

    Imagine. Dream. Believe. Always.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.